Sayreville teen's death remains unsolved 12 years later

Photo of Nancy Noga, 17-year-old Sayreville girl who was killed in 1999 as she was walking home from her part-time job

SAYREVILLE — Twelve years later, borough police are still looking for answers in the slaying of Nancy Noga.

The 17-year-old high school senior was murdered on Jan. 7, 1999, some time after she left her job at the Rag Shop on Route 9 in Old Bridge.

On the anniversary of her death, detectives have no suspects but are renewing a call for help from anyone who might shed new light on the unsolved crime, according to a report in the Home News Tribune.

"I wouldn't say that we look at it every day," said Detective Lt. Timothy Brennan. "It's a file on a sergeant's desk and when we're not investigating other things, when there's a lull in things, we grab it."

Brennan, who has led the department's detective bureau for five years, was unable to discuss specifics of the ongoing investigation. But he said investigators have held hundreds of interviews with relatives, friends and co-workers and have pored over evidence again and again.

Police believe Noga was killed after beginning the 15-minute walk from the Rag Shop to her apartment in the Skytop Gardens complex off Ernston Road, where she lived with her father and stepmother.

On Jan. 12, an elderly many walking his dog found Noga's frozen body in a wooded area behind the Mini Mart Plaza shopping center and across from the apartment complex.

Investigators found she was killed by a blow to the head from a blunt object. She was wearing a purple Arizona cotton jacket, a dark V-neck sweater, light-blue flare jeans and black-and white platform sneakers. She carried a purple backpack.

She was still wearing her clothes when she was found, police said at the time.

The frustration that has mounted for investigators is no different for Noga's family. Her sister, Janice Whitt of Stokesdale, N.C., said she tries to contact Sayreville police for updates every year around the holidays.

"It would be nice just to know what happened to her, how somebody you really care about is just gone one day and you don't know why or who did it," Whitt, 31, said in a brief telephone interview.

Other officers once involved in the case have since retired but have been unable to let go. Some have come in to provide a personal perspective whenever the case changes hands.

"Any time the case is taken over by new detectives, we go through all of the evidence again," Brennan said. "We go through everything to refresh the new guy taking over and get him up to speed on what's going on."

The department continues to work with the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office in the investigation.